AEGiS-BAR: Time to pop the bubble

Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2001. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.

Time to pop the bubble

Bay Area Reporter - June 1, 2001
Jeff Getty

Ever since the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, the media has played a crucial role. Since TV and the mainstream press have always boiled AIDS down to minimal coverage and sound bites, we see what amounts to an AIDS reporting roller coaster ride. One year AIDS is cured or treatable, the next year it is back to doom and gloom. Now 20 years after the first CDC AIDS report, many people think that AIDS is no longer a threat, that it is a chronic but treatable disease. We are at the top of the coaster just now. And we have hasty media reports and glamorous HIV drug advertisements to blame. But we can also blame ourselves. There is a new HIV denialism. It is the idea that one will no longer suffer and die from HIV infection, and denial that spreading it to someone else will cause them any harm.

Over the past few weeks, the nation's media outlets have been busily building a series of stories and articles about AIDS 20 years later. Many activists and nonprofit folks have been asked to tell their sad stories or comment on various angles in the epidemic. Over and over the HIV community has had to stress to reporters that AIDS is not yet under control in this country - let alone the rest of the world. Watch the messages in the press in coming days and see if we have been able to shift the media's message back toward reality: AIDS is still often fatal, the HIV drug side effects can be worse than the disease, and most of the rest of people in the world with AIDS are still being left to die. We'll be lucky to get two of these three important facts across.

And the reporters keep asking those tough unanswerable questions such as: Why are gay men still having multiple sex partners and advertising for unsafe sex on the Internet? And, why would anyone advertise that their viral load is undetectable in a sex ad? After interviewing a HIV-positive gay man who had bragged about having dozens of recent sex partners and never disclosing his HIV status, reporter Leslie Stahl asked me to explain. Off-camera I told her that many people in my community, especially the sick and dying, feel outrage and deep sadness about such activity. On-camera, I blamed poor education and misleading advertising. But the bare truth is this: so many gay men have bought into the "HIV is cured or treatable" myth that they no longer worry about transmitting it to others. Stahl had me on the spot. One of the CBS producers remarked that all men, gay and straight, are sex pigs.

But there was a brief time when we thought with our brains rather than our dicks.

One week after Andrew Sullivan's Web site attacked the campaign to get the HIV drug ads fixed, a furious rumor circulated over the Internet that Sullivan had another Web site - a barebacking Web page. [Editor's note: The Bay Area Reporter e-mailed Sullivan for a response to the Internet allegations about the barebacking Web site; to date no response has been received.] To me it made sense, if the drug ads were causing unsafe sex as the Department of Public Health's Dr. Jeff Klausner asserts, then it follows that people into regular unsafe sex might have liked those mountain climbing and pretty-boy ads. After all, why should anyone worry about spreading a disease that according to the ads, would lead to a normal or even athletic life? Angry letters came in defending survival optimism, most expressing the same message: "Don't mess with our ads." That spells out the new denial. Since the advent of HIV treatment, it's as if a delusional bubble now surrounds many HIV-infected gay men. They like to think it's over.

Go back to work, go back to sex, and don't look back - ever. Last Sunday I saw a sick and dying man walking with his mother in a gay neighborhood. Nobody smiled. Nobody offered to help. They just stared right through him - as if he did not exist. It won't happen to them. It can't.

At a recent late-stage AIDS support group held in San Francisco, all the participants agreed that the most difficult emotional hurdle in AIDS was living from day to day without a future. Anyone of the group could one day get their HIV under control and possibly even get their T-cells back up to a safe number. They then might re-enter the bubble as well - re-enter the happy realm where future plans can be made and one's sex life could return to piggish proportions. Life in a fantasy world is better than life without any future. Unfortunately in some cases, getting well also begets getting unwell, if you know what I mean.

The San Francisco AIDS Foundation needs to be thanked for its recent prevention campaign. Campaigns aimed at HIV-positive men are also long overdue. Because the long-term reality of AIDS is an unpleasant life filled with nasty drug side effects, illness, depression, and no future.

It's time to pop the bubble. The drug ads weren't real. There is no cure or vaccine in sight. Having unsafe sex destroys people's lives. Could this still be happening after 20 years?
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Always watch for outdated information. This article first appeared in 2001. This material is designed to support, not replace, the relationship that exists between you and your doctor.

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